Heretofore difficulty has been encountered in overcoming the general arrangement of a pump and the drive means for it when a separate pump motor is not used, and for example in an earlier Patent of ours (U.S. Pat. No. 4,615,844), a pump was direct coupled to a fan shaft, and use was made of a priming tube which always contained some water so that upon commencement of operation, water Was initially driven down into the pump space before being discharged therefrom. This is obviously inconvenient and not always as reliable as may be hoped.
In another patent of ours (U.S. Pat. No. 4,572,808), the fan shaft was horizontal and the pump spindle vertical, and the drive between the two was a friction drive. Right angle friction drives have also been used in U.S. Pat. No. 2,998,714 (Bonzer); U.S. Pat. No. 2,730,905 (Pence); U.S. Pat. No. 2,757,613 (Driver), and U.S. Pat. No. 4,269,573 (Goode); but friction drives do not deliver high torque, especially under moist conditions. A very satisfactory arrangement can be used wherein the fan shaft is vertical (our U.S. Pat. No. 4,338,264), but such an arrangement is not generally applicable to axial flow fans, such as are generally used on smaller coolers.